


The Contract

by SuburbanSun



Category: Superstore (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends With Benefits, Stress Relief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-15 06:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13024884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/pseuds/SuburbanSun
Summary: She’s not seducing Jonah. She’s simply proposing a business deal. A friendly agreement. And all she knows is that this had better work, because Amy needs to get laid.





	The Contract

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Diaphenia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diaphenia/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! Thanks to htbthomas for betaing!

If Amy could only pick one word to describe herself-- well, it wouldn’t be “relaxed.” She had never been the type to relax. To her credit, it wasn’t easy to relax when one was a young mother juggling diaper duty and a full-time job, nor was it easy to relax when one was feigning happiness in a failing marriage.

But for almost-divorced Amy, for single mom Amy, for this new-and-not-necessarily-improved Amy? It was downright impossible. 

She’d gone to the mall with Cheyenne at lunch and stopped by one of those massage kiosks, the ones she typically avoided on her way to buy school clothes for Emma. She’d straddled the uncomfortable leather chair with its weird headrest, and allowed the kiosk employee to rub her back with oddly-shaped pieces of plastic. She’d left with a crick in her neck and shelled out $25 for a massager she didn’t need. 

When that hadn’t worked, she’d tried aromatherapy-- at least, the closest she could get to aromatherapy at Cloud 9. She’d scooped up all the lavender-scented candles she could find and lit them one by one, flipped off the lights in the break room and tried to focus on her breathing.

After two and a half minutes, Mateo strolled in and complained about the smell. 

“Sorry, it’s just, I’m allergic to sadness,” he’d said, snuffing out a candle.

So Amy was _still_ stressed, and had blown $17.48 on candles, even with her employee discount. 

Deep down, she’d known those half-hearted attempts to ease her tension wouldn’t work. No, she knew there was only one thing that would do the trick.

She slumped forward in her plastic break room chair, chin in hand, and groaned. “I need to get _laid_.”  

“What?” said Mateo. “Ew.”

 

 

 

She counted the tiles of the floor as she paced back and forth. She rapped the rolled-up document she held against the palm of her free hand. Where _was_ he? She’d bribed Garrett to page him to Housewares a full five minutes ago. 

“Did I hear there was some kind of colander incident?” Jonah said at last, appearing at the end of the aisle with a look of confusion that bordered on cute (but just barely). “Because they all look perfectly intact to me.” He waved a hand, equivocating. “Well, except for all the holes, but that’s a feature, not a bug, which--”

“Let’s have sex,” Amy blurted. He blinked at her a few times, mouth still hanging open as if she’d pressed pause on a Jonah remote control-- something she had, on a few occasions, wished she could do. When he didn’t say anything, she smiled her best, most confident grin. “So, what do you think?” 

He flexed his fingers, then moved to put his hands on his hips, but missed, his body jerking forward. “Wo-- I-- you-- now?”

Amy huffed and rolled her eyes. “Yes, Jonah, do me now, right up against the KitchenAid mixers.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Amy, you didn’t exactly provide much context!”

She sighed. She’d known this might prove difficult; that’s why she’d brought paperwork. She unrolled the papers in her hand and thrust them at him. “Here’s your context: I’m proposing an arrangement. Totally casual, no-strings-attached sex, intended only to scratch an itch, nothing more.” He took the papers and skimmed them with wide eyes. Somewhere near the bottom of the second page, he chuckled.

“In the event that one of the involved parties becomes dissatisfied with said agreement--” he read. “What is this, some kind of a pre-nup?”

“Precisely,” Amy deadpanned. “If this goes south, I need to make sure my investments and summer home are safe from your grubby little hands.”

Jonah smirked. “Can I at least get the JetSkis? _One_ JetSki?" 

She snatched the paperwork back from him and hid her smile. “This is serious, Jonah. This isn’t me seducing you; this is me proposing a business deal.” When he still looked amused, she shrugged, eyes downcast. “Look, it’s just… ever since Adam and I-- actually, let’s face it, even long _before_ Adam and I split up, things have been a bit-- slow for me in that department. And between work, and making sure I can make rent at the end of the month on my own, and shuttling Emma between her dad’s new apartment and mine, I’ve just been so--”

“Left wanting?” Jonah suggested. “With a mighty need?”

Amy dropped her hands to her sides in defeat. “Horny.”

“Oh. That’s, ah, another way to put it.”

She held out the papers again. “Look, I’ve outlined a series of rules that I think will make this deal agreeable to both involved parties.”

“I.e. you and me.”

“Exactly. Totally casual, not serious, just sex,” she read off the page. “If one party becomes dissatisfied with the arrangement, it can be nullified at anytime...” She turned the page. “In the instance that one party wants to have sex and the other does not, Party B is not obligated to have sex but is obligated to provide Party A with an explanation.”

“Ah,” said Jonah. “The headache clause.” 

She pointed to item 6A. “Not too much tongue during kissing.” 

One of Jonah’s hands few to his lips, and he furrowed his brow. “Do I do that?”

Amy frowned. “What? No. I mean, I wouldn’t know, we barely-- but probably not. It’s just, you know-- personal preference.”

He swallowed.

She reviewed the remaining items with him one by one, and he nodded along, chewing at the edge of his thumb as if lost in thought.

“So that’s that?” he asked once she’d finished. “Has your lawyer taken a look at this?” 

“Please, we’re already paying her _more_ than enough for something that high school couples do all the time. I mean, how hard is a divorce, really? ‘Susie, I think we should break up,’” she quipped, deepening her voice. “Bobby, I think we should break up too,” she said, pitching her voice high. “And then you’re broken up! Why does it all of a sudden cost thousands of dollars when you’re adults?” She might have stamped her foot, just a little, at the end of her rant. When she met Jonah’s eyes, he was clearly trying to hold back a laugh, and she raised a hand to her forehead. “Ugh. You were joking.”

“And you clearly need this more than I thought.” He reached for the paperwork and pulled a pen from behind his ear, signing once and initialing thrice before handing it back.

Amy flipped to the last page and signed her own name, her looping signature next to his scratchy scrawl, and then it was on paper, in ink.

They were really going to do this thing.

 

 

 

Amy had Friday off, and Jonah only worked the morning shift, so they chose Friday night to kick off their agreement. Normally when Amy dropped Emma off at Adam’s new apartment for the weekend, she felt sad, but this time, she drove away from his building with a stomach full of butterflies. 

“You’re sure Garrett isn’t coming home?” Amy asked as Jonah led her to sit on the leather couch in the living room at Garrett’s-- and now Jonah’s-- place.

“Nah, I asked him at least four times this morning if he was really working a double.” He sat down beside her, close but not touching, and the leather creaked. “Eventually I had to make up a story about how I’d run headfirst into the forklift in the warehouse,” he said, indicating a purplish spot at his hairline. “Told him I must have selective amnesia.”

Amy reached up, letting her fingers drift over the spot. “It looks so real. Is this… eyeshadow?”

Jonah shrugged. “Cheyenne doesn’t ask questions when you ask her to paint mysterious bruises onto your face. Is that weird?”

Instead of dropping her hand to her lap, she let it fall to rest on his shoulder. He glanced down at it before meeting her eyes again. “Well, Cheyenne’s a little weird,” she said, in what she hoped was a seductive voice. She’d taken care with her appearance, ironing her favorite top and curling her hair and digging an old tube of lip gloss out of the bottom of her purse. She wanted them to do this thing right.

“That she is,” Jonah said softly, and if she wasn’t imagining it, his eyes drifted to her lips. Score one for CoverGirl Colorlicious in Juicy Fruit. For a moment, his face angled toward hers, and she let her eyes start to close-- and then he jumped up from the couch, pressing his fingers to both temples.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me; I must really have amnesia,” he said, then gestured for the nearby kitchen. “Can I offer you a drink?" 

“I’m good, actually.”

“No, no, we’ve got whatever you like. Beer, wine--”

“Jonah, seriously, I’m fine.”

“--vodka, tequila?”

Amy hesitated. When had any friends-with-benefits arrangement kicked off without a little liquid courage? “I could do a tequila shot, sure.”

With a nod, Jonah gestured for her to follow him into the kitchen, and proceeded to pull out the largest bottle of tequila Amy had ever seen. 

“Where did you get that?” she said, leaning against his countertop with a laugh.

He grimaced as he tried to uncork it. “The liquor store over on Pinedale.”

“Did you feel compelled to get a whole army drunk?” 

“I didn’t know how much we’d need,” he said, finally yanking out the cork with a loud ‘pop.’ “I wanted to be prepared.”

He pulled open the fridge door and bent down to grab a bag of limes from the crisper, and Amy pretended not to enjoy the view. “What, you thought you’d need to liquor me up to sleep with you? I don’t know if you recall, but we signed a contract that says I’m a sure thing.”

Jonah quirked an eyebrow as he sliced a lime in half. “I like to hedge my bets.”

She ignored the little thrill she felt when they flirted; it wasn’t new, but it also didn’t have any bearing on their arrangement. She’d suggested they sleep together because they were friends, and she trusted him, and because let’s face it, her other options were Brett or the guy who worked at the Schlotzsky's Deli on 3rd Avenue and always put extra salami on her sandwich, no charge.

But it didn’t exactly hurt that sometimes, Jonah looked at her like he was holding himself back.

At the moment, he was looking at a shot of tequila like that, lined up and ready in front of him. He’d salted the rim of two small glasses, and handed her a wedge of lime.

“Ready?”

She smirked, taking the lime and picking up her glass. “Born ready.”

“Well, then-- cheers.” They clinked glasses, then salt, shot, lime. Amy’s eyes watered, but it went down smooth. When she shifted to set her glass down on the counter, it moved her even closer to Jonah, and she tilted her head to look up at him.

“Shall we head back to the couch?”

The leather creaked again when they sat down, but this time they sat close enough that their legs were pressed up against each other. Still feeling warmed by the tequila, Amy rested a hand on Jonah’s thigh and smiled. Grinning crookedly back at her, he slowly brushed her hair behind her ear, and leaned down, down, down, his lips brushing against hers with an agonizing slowness, and--

“Knock knock!" 

Amy sprang back against the arm of the couch at the sound of DIna’s voice. Jonah sat up straight.

“Dina! What are you doing here?” he asked, his jaw clenched.

She held up a can of soup and an ice pack as if it were obvious. “Saving your life.” Dina crossed to the kitchen and Amy could hear her pulling out a pot and turning on the stove. “Garrett said you’d be home, Jonah,” she called out. “Said you had some kind of a head injury. Didn’t say Amy would be here, though.”

Jonah rubbed his palms against his thighs. “Uh, yeah, I hit my head,” he called back. “Very badly. I should probably be left alone to convalesce." 

Dina popped her head around the corner from the kitchen. “Left unattended, concussions kill.” Then she disappeared again.

“Um, Dina, that’s actually why I came over,” Amy tried, meeting Jonah’s frantic gaze with a shrug. “To make sure he, ah, stays awake and lucid.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Dina. “You take one CPR class with your kid’s Girl Scout troop and suddenly you think you’re a registered nurse.”

Amy scowled. That CPR class had been _very_ informative. “Do something,” she whispered at Jonah.

“I’m trying!” he whispered back. Then, louder, “Dina, if I promise to stay awake and keep a cold compress on it, will you leave?”

Dina rounded the corner from the kitchen, carefully carrying a steaming bowl of soup along with the ice pack she’d brought. She wedged herself between Amy and Jonah on the couch and set the ice pack on the coffee table, blowing on the soup. “Nope.” She ladled up a spoonful and held it out to Jonah, who stubbornly refused to open his mouth. “Garrett and I may not be an item anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let him come home to your dead, lifeless body.”

“That’s redundant,” Jonah pointed out, and Dina took the opportunity to shove the spoon inside. He swallowed the soup with a petulant frown.

“Now,” said Dina, picking up the remote control with her free hand. “What are we watching?”

 

 

 

Amy had to work the rest of the weekend, and she had Emma during the week, so it wasn’t until the following Saturday that they tried again. This time, she insisted Jonah come to her place. “Less risk of Dina that way,” she’d said. 

“So,” Jonah said, running his fingertips along the top of the bookcase in her foyer, a hand-me-down from her parents. “This is where the magic happens.”

Amy rolled her eyes and waved him inside. “If by magic, you mean frantically rushing to get a 13-year-old off to school on time or falling asleep on the couch in my work clothes while watching _Dancing With The Stars_ , then sure.” She’d already opened up a bottle of red and set it on the coffee table, and she picked it up and poured him a glass.

“You know, that Amy magic. You know what I mean,” he replied, accepting the glass and taking a sip. “Mmm. Do I detect notes of cinnamon?”

She shrugged and took a sip of her own. “I detect notes of wine.”

“Fair enough.” They stood there for a moment before Jonah began to look around. “This place is nice, Amy, really. You have good taste.”

“Thanks,” she said, drawing out the word suspiciously. “What’s with you, it’s like you’re sucking up to me or something.” She leaned forward, crowding his space and letting her glass clink against his. “I already told you I’m a sure thing.”

He laughed, and-- was he blushing? She’d turned down the lights, so it was hard to tell. “Right, it’s just-- I’m in your territory, you know? The Amy zone. I want to be respectful.”

Amy wondered if she should have written a clause into the contract that prohibited saying sweet things. She took another, larger sip of wine, then set down the glass and reached out to take his, placing it beside hers. “I didn’t invite you over here to respect me,” she said, moving closer, close enough so her chest brushed his own. At that angle, she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. “I invited you over to respect the contract.” She slid a hand up and around to the nape of his neck, going up on her tiptoes and urging him downward to meet her halfway.

“Okay, but I can respect you _and_ the contract, you know,” he mumbled against her mouth, hands grasping at her waist. She fell back down on her heels and glared.

“Jonah, you’re killin’ the mood here.”

“Alright, alright!” He held up both hands. “I’ll try to respect you a little less.”

“Good. Now, maybe let’s…” Amy jerked her head toward the couch, and Jonah got the message, scrambling over to sit and pull her down next to him. She immediately pounced, pressing her lips to his and running both hands through his hair. He let out a little moan of surprise but gave as good as he got, deepening the kiss and trailing his hand up and down her spine in a way that made her shiver. Soon, she was leaning back on the couch without breaking the kiss, pulling him down on top of her. He followed eagerly. 

“Mm-- oh,” he said as the hand bracing him over her slipped down behind the couch cushion with a jerk. He shifted his weight to pull it back out, and when he did, he held a credit card in his hand. “Missing something?” he asked, holding it out to her. 

Amy scooted up on the couch and took it from his hand. “This is Adam’s.” Her eyes flicked back to meet Jonah’s. “He lost it a couple months ago. We looked everywhere for it. I yelled at him for being so careless.”

“Guess you didn’t look everywhere,” Jonah said, taking the card from her and chasing her lips again. She kissed him back at first, but then pulled away.

“You know what, I’m going to text him real quick.” She slid out from underneath Jonah, who sighed, resting his elbows on his knees. “I know, I know. It’s just, I told him to cancel it, but knowing him he probably forgot, and so he’ll want it back.” She grabbed her phone from the table and tapped out a quick text. “See? I’m done.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

She answered him with a kiss, pushing him against the back of the couch and straddling him. Jonah was a surprisingly good kisser, she thought, very thorough, but with an appropriate amount of tongue. He slipped his hand up under her shirt, his palm warm against her lower back, and she felt her mind going blissfully blank.

Her phone buzzed on the coffee table. Amy paused mid-kiss, but a low groan from Jonah refocused her. He moved to press kisses along the side of her jaw, down the column of her neck to her collarbone, and she let her head fall back at the sensation. Only, when she tilted her head at that angle, she could see her phone light up with another text.

“Mm, how about we move this to the bedroom?” she suggested. Surely they just needed to get the show on the road. The whole point was to clear her head, after all-- of bills, of work, of Adam. 

Jonah nodded eagerly, and she climbed off him only to grab his hand and lead the way. She mentally gave thanks for having remembered to clean up before he came over, vacuuming and putting away the load of clean laundry that had been piled on what used to be Adam's side of the bed.

She pulled him inside with both hands. “Better?” she said, as they sat down at the foot of the bed. She moved to resume making out, but he turned his head, seemingly oblivious.

“This room is nice, too. Very homey. Hey, Amy--” He turned his head back to face her. “You sure you’re not secretly an interior designer?”

She scoffed. “Yeah, I have my own show on HGTV. I just work at Cloud 9 for kicks.”

“Ha ha,” Jonah deadpanned. “Really, though. Like that painting by the window-- that’s really unique.”

Amy turned to look at it, frowning. “That? Adam picked that out, actually. It’s from when he was trying to open an art gallery. It didn’t work out. Shockingly.”

“Ah,” Jonah said, bracing his hands on his thighs and looking down at the ground. Amy twisted to face him.

“Everything okay?”

“Just sorta feels like we’re not alone.”

She furrowed her brow. “What? We’re completely alone. Emma’s at her dad’s, and--”

“See, there he is again.”

 _Oh_. “What, Adam?” His name hadn’t come up that much, had it?

Jonah sighed, scratching at the side of his jaw. “It’s just hard to feel like you’re the guy in another guy’s space." 

“We’re not-- we’re getting a divorce, Jonah. Adam doesn’t care what I do. I don’t care what he does. I’m ready to--”

“No, I know, I know, I know,” he said in a rush, raising a hand to cup her shoulder reassuringly. His thumb stroked back and forth. “I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, or we are, or anything. And I don’t think you’re not ready. Just… maybe not _here_.”

Amy looked around-- at the closet that she hadn’t quite filled up yet on her own; into the bathroom, where the counter still looked odd with only one toothbrush; at the bed, where she and Adam had-- well, not had a _lot_ of sex, but enough sex. Groaning, she let herself fall backward on the mattress.

“You’re probably right.” 

Jonah flopped back beside her. “Ooh, yeah, baby, say that again.”

She rolled her eyes, but then turned her head to look at him, biting her lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t really think about any… weirdness… inviting someone over here so soon.” 

He let his head fall to the side to match her. “‘s okay. You don’t owe me an explanation. I mean, technically you _do_ , by the stipulations of the contract…” 

“Hey, hey, hey-- respect the contract.”

Jonah grinned at her. “What do you say we make some popcorn and watch a movie? Something with really bad special effects that we can heckle.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.”

The movie was bad, and the popcorn was faintly burnt, but at the end of the night as she watched Jonah amble to his car in the parking lot, Amy felt a little bit of tension lift from her shoulders.

 

 

 

For four days, they worked on opposite schedules-- whenever Amy was free, it seemed Jonah had just clocked in, and vice versa. Her frustration level ratcheted back up to a record high.

That’s why on Thursday afternoon after she clocked out, she lurked just inside the employee bathroom, grasping Jonah by the elbow and yanking him inside the second he appeared for his shift.

“Watch out, I’m armed!” he shouted in indignant surprise.

Amy wrinkled her nose as she locked the door behind them. “Really?" 

“No,” Jonah said, smoothing out the front of his vest and catching his breath. “I just didn’t know it was you. I thought I was being kidnapped.”

“Who’d kidnap _you_?”

He glared at her, but there was no bite to it. “I’ll have you know my services are worth a _pret-_ ty penny on the black market.”

Amy smirked and stepped closer to him in the small space. “Oh, _really_?”

“Yes, really,” he said, his voice low. 

“Why don’t I be the judge of how much your _services_ are worth?” She slid her thumbs through his belt loops to pull him to her.

“Amy Dubanowski. Did you bring me into the Cloud 9 employee bathroom to seduce me?”

Amy placed an open-mouthed kiss where his neck met his shoulder. “No roommates.” Another kiss. “No ex-husbands.” And another. “No interruptions.” With that, she captured his lips in a searing kiss. He kissed her back eagerly, hungrily, and walked her slowly backward until she bumped into the sink. Then, in one smooth motion, he lifted her up to sit on the countertop.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” she said, her voice breathy. 

“I told you, Ames. I’m totally kidnappable.” He skimmed his palms up over her sides, then began to make slow work of the buttons on her blouse as he kissed her. She let out a little whimper when his knuckles grazed the tops of her breasts, and didn’t even feel embarrassed about it. She shrugged out of her shirt with a contented sigh.

“--didn’t say there was something _wrong_ with it,” came Glenn’s voice-- muffled, but unmistakably Glenn-- from the other side of the door. Amy stiffened, and Jonah’s lips stilled where they’d been kissing their way down the center of her chest.

“Oh? Then what _did_ you say, Glenn?” sniped Mateo. Jonah rested his forehead against Amy’s shoulder and sighed.

“I only said that I didn’t think that turning the store into a _male burlesque club_ at night was the best way to drum up business!”

“Oh, but a _female_ burlesque club would be just _fine_ , huh?”

“What-- no! No burlesque! No burlesque at all!”

“No, no, no, no, no, what is happening?” Amy whispered, her fingers still clutching at Jonah’s hair.

“Couldn’t tell ya,” he responded softly. He inhaled deeply through his nose, then took a step back. Amy hopped down off the counter and pulled her shirt back over her shoulders, but didn’t button it. She crossed her arms as they listened to Glenn and Mateo argue in the break room, and she tried to ignore the pinprick of frustrated tears that threatened as she realized they weren’t going anywhere.

“I’m guessing this isn’t going to happen,” Jonah said, gesturing between the two of them.

“Yeah, somehow, the mood is gone.”

He chuckled. “I’ll say.”

Amy puffed out her cheeks on a long exhale. “Jonah, I don’t think this is going to work." 

“Of course not. I can’t perform with Glenn’s voice right outside the door.” He shuddered. “And I really hope that’s the last time I ever have to reference my sexual performance and Glenn in the same sentence.” 

“No, I mean--” She began to button up her shirt, not meeting his eyes. “I don’t think _this_ is going to work. I think we should just forget it.”

Jonah frowned. “Hang on-- “

“It was a dumb idea, anyway, okay?” She finished with her shirt and weaved around him to perch on the closed toilet. “We said casual, and easy, and this has just been hard, so…” 

She didn’t want to look at him, but when she did, she could tell he was confused. But what was she supposed to do? All she’d wanted was a low-key arrangement that could meet her needs and lower her stress. Instead, she felt more frustrated than ever. 

“Okay,” he said at last. “Consider it forgotten.”

She nodded resolutely and stared down at her fingernails. He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms. They listened to Glenn and Mateo fight for another 25 minutes before the coast was finally clear and they could sneak out of the bathroom unnoticed. Jonah clocked in without a word, and Amy drove home in silence, accompanied by a knot in her stomach and a gnawing feeling of regret.

 

 

 

They were both on the schedule the next morning, naturally, and Jonah seemed to decide that restocking bathroom tissue was a two-person job. He fell into her rhythm, grabbing a 10-pack of two-ply and adding it to the stack, rinse, repeat. Neither of them spoke.

After the aisle was fully stocked but before Amy could find something else to do, Jonah nervously pulled something from his pocket and held it out to her. She eyed it suspiciously, but then took it-- a plastic key card.

“I wish I could spring for the Four Seasons, but, ah-- I work here. The La Quinta on Grove St. has a nice continental breakfast, though, so I hear. Check in’s 3 p.m.”

Amy frowned. “I don’t understand.”

He pinned her with a look. “Ames, you’re beyond tense. You don’t just need to get laid-- you need to take some time to relax.”

“I’m not very good at that,” she admitted.

“What, you? I’d never have guessed.” He smiled, that fond smile he gave her sometimes even when she’d done or said something really strange. “Look, just-- take it. Go have a night to yourself for once. You deserve it.”

He turned to walk away before she could say anything back, and he’d reached the end of the bathroom tissue aisle before she found her voice. “Jonah?” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, I have to go find Sandra-- I told her I couldn’t finish go-backs because you had a TP emergency.”

“Ew, what does that even mean?" 

He shrugged, then disappeared. Amy looked down at the key card in her hand and fought a grin.

 

 

 

A few hours later, after a quick pit-stop at home to pack a bag and then drive Emma to Adam’s for the weekend, she checked into the La Quinta with a lightness to her step. When she unlocked room 307 with the key card Jonah had given her, the first thing she saw was a six-pack of her favorite beer sitting on the faux-oak desk.

She walked over to grab one, tossing her bag onto the king-sized bed, and then noticed what was beneath the beers-- the contract, with “VOID” scrawled across it in Sharpie ink. Stuck to it were several Post-It notes, stacked on top of each other like a flipbook and covered in Jonah’s handwriting. Amy carefully peeled them off the paper to read.  

> _Thought you could use a night off. The room’s all yours-- relax, order that Reese Witherspoon movie you never got around to seeing while it was in theaters because ticket prices are insane nowadays, do whatever you like. No stress. Just a totally casual night in. -J_

“Oh, Jonah,” she said softly, thumbing through the Post-Its.

She wasn’t sure what to do with an entire night of freedom stretched out ahead of her. The room was quiet, and empty, and for once, she did feel something akin to relaxed. She sat down on the bed, scooting all the way back to nestle against the pillows-- hotel pillows were always the fluffiest-- and making sure to sit right in the middle.

She cracked the beer in her hand and took a long sip.

She shut her eyes, tilting her head back and listening to the hum of the air conditioner-- and, blissfully, nothing else.

Then she dug her phone out of her pocket and texted Jonah one-handed: “Come over. You know the room number.” He texted back in record time: “Oh thank god." 

He rapped on the door a beer-and-a-quarter later, and that was enough liquid courage for Amy to pin him up against the wall next to the fold-out ironing board, heedless of how much tongue was too much tongue and what this might mean now that the contract was void. All that was on her mind was how good he was making her feel.

 

 

 

It turned out, Jonah was right. The La Quinta on Grove St. _did_ have a nice continental breakfast. They both enjoyed it the next morning-- before slipping back to the room for round two.

Amy felt loose, content, and relaxed all day long.


End file.
